I use beersmith 2.0, and I have read that others on here do as well. I am embarrassed to point you away from this site, but I feel that Matt (who is a member here) has a great write-up on his personal blog, with plenty of suggestions to configure the equipment profile in Beersmith.

One difference I have noticed from the profile Matt has freely provided, is that my boil off rate is lower @ around 1.25 gallons an hour. This could be that I live in Colorado, and tend to brew in my garage when the weather is most disagreeable.

I tend to try and brew as much beer as I possibly can in a given 6 hour session, so I usually scale my recipes up to a 14 gallon pre-boil volume, and over the course of a 90 min boil, end up with close to 11-12 gallons into a fermenter.

I am new to all grain brewing, so I haven't figured out everything in beersmith yet, but I enjoy the program!

1. I have a 2011 model... so the volumes and boil off rates match my system and location. I would highly suggest modifying the boil off rate in particular.2. My efficiency has been consistent at about 80% using a crush around 0.04, and will remill malt if needed, but not go any finer than 0.04. Bob at Sabco would not approve - he likes 0.055. So you need to find the setting that best matches your setup and processes. I would suggest starting efficiency at about 70% and adjust it as your efficiency improves.3. I suspect that the internal plumbing, deadspace for the mashtun, etc. may vary a bit on the new model. Certainly the new diptube and boil kettle configuration will be different than mine. I took a sharpy and calibrated my dip tubes and worked out the losses. You may want to do that yourself, or guess at around 1 quart or so. It's surprisingly small in volume.4. Except in certain instances, I separately measure my strike and sparge water. I do not do the backlet fill method, rather heat my strike in the MLT without the grain to a few degrees above desired strike temp, and heat the sparge water in the HLT. I also treat my sparge water with acid to below 6.0 pH.

Silver_Ant - I am jealous. I grew up in Colorado Springs. I have been trying to get back, but work always pulls me away. Trinity is the bomb! My sister and mother still live there and work down off Weber street.

Heh, that's cool. I work around the corner from trinity, and my co-workers routinely meet there after work for food and drinks. There should be a case study made of how trinity markets and brands.

Did you go to high school in the springs?

And to keep topic on point, how long does it take to heat the strike water in the MLT? I usually bring 8 gallons to a boil in the BK, transfer to the HLT, then boil another 8 gallons and transfer over til full. This leaves me with very clean water. I will need to find my water report at post it over in the water section. I wish the beersmith software had a more robust water calculator.

No we left CS when I was in 4th grade... returned after college. Always been home though... never gets out of your blood. I get up there a couple of times a year.

The heating rates would be nearly the same between the HLT and the MLT... maybe a little help from the Heat Exchanger. The benefit I see is the stability of hitting strike temperatures very closely, less direct fire to maintain mash temps. Takes around 30 minutes, ignoring the ramp speed notifications. It's far less important since it's just water.

If I recall, you really only need to treat your water with Campden. I would also filter with active charcoal, especially in some of the older communities (old iron and copper plumbing). Otherwise, your tap water is very soft and low in alkalinity (20-30 ppm as CaCO3). A perfect slate for adding minerals to achieve different effects. I write about it some on my blog. I use the Bru'n Water spreadsheet and find it very accurate in providing good mash pH estimates, and for calculating additions. It does have a bit of a learning curve.

BeerSmith falls down in the water front, as well as a few other areas. I find myself needing to modify mash profiles, malt profiles and such to get more accuracy. Still, it is a pretty good tool.

Hello gents, I don't get on here much so sorry for reviving this thread. I just wanted to comment about being a fellow BM owner living in the Springs. I've been looking for a good water report for Widefield water and sanitation district. I've asked fellow BBOPP member, a local brew club, but no one has it. Any input is greatly appreciated. Also, on a personal note I'd like to say I've cracked the nut on brew house efficiency and have reached 90% in my past two sessions. Prior to that I was averaging 70-75%. Anyways cheers and hope to chat some more with you all!!!

I've been using BeerSmith the entire time I've had my Brew magic and I'm having trouble getting over 70-75% efficiency now. Something that always seems to get me is my pre-boil volume is always a good gallon higher than BeerSmith would lead me to believe based on sparge water calculations. I've been increasing my boil time to compensate. Even with that I'm still hitting about 70%. I've recently adjusted the water to grain ratio calculation to 1.35 qt per pound, we'll see how this works. I'm also making slight adjustments to my crush to see what effects that has. I'm curious how you were able to hit consistent 90% efficiency?

I'd say the 90% was either pure luck or a combination of perfect conditions. I've brewed about 4 batches since that post and I've been between 83-87% on each one. I've really been able to see a 10% increase in sparge process. I fly sparge at about 45min following a mash out. That has been my biggest single adjustment increase among other things I've done. I've found the grain crush plays a huge roll too. Recently I in invited a fellow brewer over to the brew day. Well he pick up his grains from a LHBS I'm familiar with. Now I'm also familiar with past issue I had with efficiency when using the mill there and have since stopped. Well seeing as a fellows brew buddy already made the purchase I decided t roll with it and brew on my BM. All other perimeters were the. Same that day down to mash times/temps/water volume. Truly I should have hit the mid to high 80s as I've done recently. Well starting out I looked at his crush from the LHBS and I must say it didn't look too good. The grain still seemed very whole with some splitting but not the kind you wanna see. Well after brewing and doing a repeat session like many before where I hade 80-90% eff, this session landed us at 67%. Now that's a huge drop and immediately made me wonder but after careful review of out brew session the only change was the crush. I hope this helps when you try to drill down on issue. I just know I'm dialed in on my process and water. The "X" factor I can't control is bad crash from some LHBS.